"The Washington court, following Wisconsin's model,established a four-part test to be used by judges in determining whether aperson has standing as a de facto parent:(1) the natural or legal parent consented to and fostered the parent-likerelationship; (2) the petitioner and the child lived together in the samehousehold; (3) the petitioner assumed obligations of parenthood withoutexpectation of financial compensation; and (4) the petitioner has been ina parental role for a length of time sufficient to have established withthe child a bonded, dependent relationship parental in nature.

"Rather than answering a simple question--Does the adult have a biologicalor adoptive relationship to the child in question?--judges will awardparenthood depending on whether the relationship appears sufficiently"parent-like," a notable expansion of state power in the realm of familylife.

"The courts have justified the creation of de facto parenthood by arguingit serves the best interests of children. In reality, however, it works atcross-purposes to the institution that most essentially serves children'sinterests--marriage. ... In reality, de facto parenthood serves adults more than children ... .

"This new circular definition of parenthood--a parent is a person whoperforms the function of a parent--is part of a larger trend in family lawthat sees the law as the creator of the family ... the words we use todescribe this most vital social institution--family, mother, father,marriage--do not correspond to natural relationships, but are mere labelsthat the state is free to apply as it sees fit.

"In the case of the label "marriage," the proposed change ... has been widely and loudly debated. The legal definition of "parent," meanwhile, is already quietly changing."

New York already has what is in effect a bilateral no-fault divorce law.This means that if both spouses want out of the marriage, they can divorcewithout any apparent reason after living separate and apart for one yearafter signing a separation agreement. In fact, the vast majority ofdivorce cases are settled without court intervention. These settlements,termed separation agreements, then become the basis for the divorcedecree. The process, because it doesn't require much involvement by thecourts, is less expensive for both parties.

The problem with unilateral no-fault divorce is that it hurts women byremoving the incentive for the moneyed spouse (who is usually the husband)to make a settlement. Instead of negotiating with a dependent spouse ˜whose only leverage for avoiding an impoverished post-divorce life forherself and her children may be her assent, or lack of it, to divorce ˜the husband can simply go to court and obtain an uncontested divorce. Evenif child custody and property division issues haven't been resolved, ajudge can grant a divorce for "good cause" if say, the husband'sgirlfriend is pregnant.

And here's where things get tricky. In these cases, resolution of childcustody and property division can drag on for years, to the detriment ofthe abandoned poorer spouse. And because unilateral no-fault cuts down onthe incentive to settle cases by agreement, it can take a lot of money andtime in court to make such divorces final.

For women, in general, having to go to court instead of being able tonegotiate a settlement is a misfortune ˜ especially in New York, where, asthe Office of Court Administration has repeatedly acknowledged, the courtsystem has a bias against women. Moreover, a settlement is also beneficialfor women because both parties can agree to terms that the court cannotorder. For example, in New York, the court can require child support untilthe child is 21, but the parties can, and often do agree outside of courtto support payments until graduation from college.

And there's no question that unilateral no-fault divorce hurts women'seconomic well-being. A study in Connecticut conducted from 1977 to 1987,showed that under unilateral no-fault divorce laws, fewer women ˜ only 37percent ˜ were awarded the marital home as compared with 82 percent underfault divorce. In 1970, California became the first state in America toadopt unilateral no-fault laws. These laws have had a devastating impacton the women in that state. For instance, in San Diego, the likelihood ofa woman receiving alimony awards went to 30 percent in 1976 from 66percent in 1968.

Unfortunately, it appears that New York will move to institute unilateralno-fault divorce. If this is inevitable then, at the very least, the stateLegislature needs to remedy the problems faced by poorer spouses in adispute by awarding them counsel and expert fees commensurate with thefees being spent by the moneyed spouse. Such a mandate would go a long wayto level the playing field and ensure fairness for the non-moneyed spousein the court system. The Legislature also needs to establish fair andequitable economic maintenance guidelines, just as the state now has childsupport guidelines.

Furthermore, in the case of custody disputes, the Legislature shouldrequire that child custody be awarded to the parent who was the primarycaregiver during the marriage to ensure stability and continuity of carefor children.

A primary caregiver presumption would also cut down on a litigation toolin which one parent agrees to forgo a custody battle if the other parentagrees to a less favorable financial settlement. Richard Neely, a lawyerin West Virginia, has acknowledged that he often gave that advice to hismale clients. When he became chief justice of the West Virginia SupremeCourt of Appeals, he was responsible for the passage of a primarycaregiver law. Unfortunately, under pressure from fathers' rights groups,West Virginia's Legislature has since revoked that presumption.

New York is often mentioned as the only state in America withoutunilateral no-fault divorce laws. But that doesn't mean that fault divorceis bad. New York is the only state where the court has jurisdiction toorder child support to 21 ˜ and that's good. Sure, there are things aboutNew York's divorce laws that could be fixed, but a process that takes timeand weighs the various arguments is the only way to ensure fairness andfinancial stability for everyone involved.

Marcia Pappas is the president of New York's chapter of the NationalOrganization of Women.

New York has been affected by the nationwide culture of unilateral divorce, but its much tighter divorce law does help keep marriages from falling apart -- New York has one of the nation's lowest divorce rates. The current law also favors negotiation over unilateral action. That's a major reason why out-of-court "Collaborative Divorce" has been so successful in New York.

If the Assembly wants to do something about ugly "fault" divorces and encourage collaborative divorces, they should do so directly, by switching the waiting periods around -- have a one-year waiting period before filing a "fault" divorce, and a much shorter waiting period for truly "mutual consent" divorces, where the couple has worked out an agreement on all the details, such as custody and finances.

But that is very different from unilateral "irreconcilable differences" divorce, a tragic experiment the first time around, and a farce if it is repeated now. The Assembly should look carefully at the experience of the rest of the U.S., where the well-intended 1960s movement to replace fault with a more therapeutic, consensual process went tragically awry. Many states passed laws saying that before granting a divorce, judges should carefully examine whether the couple really had "irreconcilable differences", referring them to counseling whenever it might help. But these laws quickly broke down into mere "unilateral divorce", because judges did not have the time or training to implement them, so they decreed that filing for a divorce was proof of "irreconcilable differences".

Nationwide, unilateral divorce has produced more divorces, longer divorces, and uglier divorces.

Excerpts:"Jennifer Roback Morse's essay, 'Why Unilateral Divorce Has No Place in a Free Society,' is published in The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, and Morals, edited by Robert P. George and Jean Bethke Elshtain (Spence Publishing Company, Dallas, 2006)....Jennifer Roback Morse, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, has been tracing the effects of no-fault divorce throughout the culture. ......"Most significant to Morse's argument is the fact that government is not needed in order for marriage to emerge. "Marriage is an organic, pre-political institution that emerges spontaneously from society," she argues. Furthermore, the actual operation of marriage as an institution depends only to a very small extent upon government at all. "This culture around marriage may have some legal or governmental elements," she acknowledges. "But in most times and places, the greater part of that cultural machinery is more informal than legal and is based more on kinship than on law."..."... one of Morse's central concerns appears--where the informal culture of marriage fails, the government must step in with litigation, laws, supervision, and bureaucratic intrusion. Inevitably, this means "a disaster for the cause of limited government."..."Where this informal and very natural pattern of home life is not preserved, the state must enter the picture. As always, the state enters clumsily and at great cost. Spending just a couple of hours observing a divorce court or custody hearing will be sufficient to prove the point--government simply cannot replace what the breakup of marriage destroys."

When Laneisha Drafts tells people about the father of her child, she'llbe able to call him "my husband."

When Duane Drafts talks about the mother of his child, he'll refer toher as "my wife."

Now if you're thinking that's as it should be, you're right. If you'rethinking that's the way it is, then oh how wrong you are.

In today's America, the culture has accepted the terms "baby mama" and"baby daddy." The former is used by guys who have a child by a womanthey didn't and probably won't marry. Women similarly situated use thelatter term.

How bad has it gotten? Two staffers at a West Baltimore community centerwho work frequently with teens say both sexes refer not to boyfriendsand girlfriends, but to "baby mamas" and "baby daddies." That's not theworst of it.

In many instances, there's no child anywhere around. The girl isn'tpregnant. It's just that the "baby mama/baby daddy" culture is sopervasive that the terms have now replaced boyfriend and girlfriend.

American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino had a hit song called "Baby Mama."Fantasia wants single moms to have their own holiday. If you darecriticize Barrino for putting out such nonsense, her fans will react asif you've just tried to drown the baby Jesus.

So the Drafts are clearly swimming against the tide of current youthculture. Laneisha is 18. Duane is 19. They tied the knot about twomonths ago. Their baby is due in August if you believe Duane and July ifyou believe Laneisha.

Neither has a job but both are looking for employment. Laneisha's goalis to be an obstetrician. Duane wants to work with computers. If you'rethinking they got married and are having a child under less than idealconditions, then you'd be right. But unlike their peers who bandy aboutthe terms "baby mama" and "baby daddy" as if they're acceptable, theDrafts are hedging their bets.

They are enrolled in a "healthy relationships and marriage" curriculumsponsored by the Baltimore Building Strong Families Program, also knownas BSF. Cassandra Codes-Johnson is the director of BSF. Codes-Johnsonalso works on the staff of the Center for Fathers, Families andWorkforce Development.

CFWD has been around for seven years. The goal of the organization is tohelp "individuals in regaining the personal power to benefit theirfamilies and communities," according to a news release announcing a $1million grant to promote marriage and build stronger relationships foryoung black couples like Duane and Laneisha Draft.

The staff of CFWD will use that money to train workers from 16 communityorganizations in a curriculum designed to help poor black couples from18 to 35 years old build healthier relationships and marriages. Thereason for that should be obvious, but the folks at CFWD put it in theirnews release anyway.

"Studies have shown that children reared in homes free from violence andby both parents do better in school and are less likely to live inpoverty," reads the release.

That information has been known for some time, as has the skinny that apreponderance of black homes without dads is a recent phenomenon. Duringa lecture at Morgan State University,0,5357177.story?coll=bal-local-columnists> in late 2003, authorJawanza Kunjufu said that 90 percent of black families had a father inthe home in 1920 and 80 percent of black homes had a father in 1960.What are the figures for 2006?

"Our community can't survive [with] 70 percent of our children beingborn out of wedlock," Joseph T. Jones Jr., the president and chiefexecutive officer of CFWD, said Thursday at a news conference givingmore details about the initiative.

Jones is right about that. And he said he's right for insisting thathip-hop culture be a part of the curriculum he and a team of consultantsdeveloped to teach young couples about relationships and marriage.

"Unfortunately, most people associate hip-hop with one extreme end ofthat genre," Jones said. "There's some crazy stuff that goes on in rock.There's crazy stuff that goes on in opera, if you can understand it."

Jones pointed to Philadelphia rapper/actor Will Smith -- and hismarriage to Baltimore-born actress Jada Pinkett-Smith -- as an exampleof hip-hop culture that will be used in the curriculum. (A guy fromPhilly hitched to a Baltimore gal: Now there's a mixed marriage if everthere was one.)

"It has some positive elements in it," Jones said of hip-hop culture.But he has no illusions about the uphill battle he -- and the Drafts --are facing.

This ruling is completely consistent with existing law. An American court won't recognize a divorce from a country that neither party was a resident of at the time of the divorce. Divorce jurisdiction is based on a person's residence in the state that grants the divorce -- not on what state or country the couple got married in.

I love the line in this article, "Divorce is usually seen as a private matter between two people". Whoever wrote that has obviously never been in a divorce court, where EVERYTHING becomes the judge's and the government's business.

By the way, mandatory divorce education classes AFTER filing are common in the U.S. All this does is move it up to a point where it may actually help prevent some divorces, in addition to making them less destructive when they do happen. Australia recently enacted a similar requirement.

This is very important. If whacked-out celebrities are allowed to be TRULY "single parents" and not have to deal with the inconveniences of sharing the parental role with anyone, lots of ordinary people are going to believe that they have a right to do the same.

Unfortunately, it did not say, at strongly as I would have liked, that there is absolutely no way the mother could have ever voluntarily terminated in the first place without either a finding of unfitness or a new couple to take the child.

It did say that a mere agreement between the parents is not enough to terminate parental rights; there needs to have been a genuine inquiry by the court into whether the child's best interests would be served by the termination, and the children would have had to have had their own, independent, lawyer. It also cites a general public policy in favor of two-parent families, and several earlier cases supporting that policy.

It includes an explanation by the trial judge of how he originally came to terminate parental rights back in 2001. It is severely lacking, but revealing. The judge spoke as if he was just swept along on the current and felt like he "had to" do what the presumably high-priced lawyers on each side wanted him to do. It sounds like the most fundamental abdication of the judge's responsibility and independence. As if the lawyers were pointing kryptonite at him.